What's Up Amsterdam 03-25-13

This week Nate and Jonathan expound upon Passover, Mouwes, Parck Café, South Side Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, making matzo at the Jewish Historical Museum, restaurant week, Pink Flamingos, Holly Herndon, Free walking tours with Sandemans, Winson Kingdom, Rene SG, Beastie Boys Café Pak Haus Wilhelmina, Rock and Roll Circus at Westerpark, We Love the 80’s, Paradiso, Dudok Ensemble, De Duif, Bollywood Dance Lessons, Artis Royal Zoo and the Bach Choir.

 MONDAY 25^th

First night of Passover - Maybe you want to know where you can get Matzoh meal before sundown. The truth is, in Mokum, there aren’t a helluva lot of choices. But for the last 200 years there has been Mouwes. Actually there’s are few kosher stores and restaurants in this neighborhood called Buitenveldert. 

Mouwes has everything you need to make a seder. 

Here is a big list of Jewish places of interest in Amsterdam compiled by the Dutch Jewish community. Happy Passover.

Meanwhile, the non-chosen are free to go get burgers and play trivia at Parck tavern at 428 Overtoom. Trivia starts at 8:30. 5 people per team, 2.50 per person. Here is a link to pictures of their hamburgers 

TUESDAY 26^th

I know where the Jukes are from but to find out where John is from you’ll have to ask the man himself and here’s your chance, South Side Johnny and the Asbury Jukes are at Paradiso tonight. You can see South Side and Co for only 24.50 plus the 3.50 shake down. 

I talked about the Jewish Historical Museum a couple of weeks ago. Just wanted to point out that starting today, they’re going to be doing Matzoh baking for kids in their children’s museum for the whole week of Passover.

Restaurant Week is back like fanny packs and calculator watches. Until April 7th you can go to some of the best restaurants in town for € 27.50 for a 3-course dinner or € 22,50 for a 3-course lunch again. Go to here to make reservations 

WEDNESDAY 27th

Here’s your chance to see the John Waters trash cinema classic Pink Flamingos on the big screen.

The good people at Melkweg Cineville (across the street from Melkweg, just off Leidseplein) are hosting this classic dry-heave fest tonight at 8 pm. You have been warned. €8 

HOLLY HERNDON with MAAN and Ignatz

Watch this video, you will know if this is for you soon enough. If it is, go enjoy yourself and support art. If it isn’t, re-evaluate the decisions that have gotten you this far.  

OT301, Amsterdam 8:30 €8/Free for Subbacultcha! Members

THURSDAY 28th

An organization called Sandemans claim to have the walking tours in the city and guess what, they’re free!!

“How is that possible?” you’re probably axing yourself.

“It isn’t” I reply. They work for tips and only a soulless MONSTER wouldn’t tip these hard working youngsters after they march your ass around Mokum explaining its history. Ph 020-7589422 Email : amsterdam@neweuropetours.eu

RENE SG + SWEET EMPIRE + LAST ADVICE at Winston Kingdom

Watch this video from Rene SG and tell me you don’t want to go to this show. This is rockandfuckinroll cooked down to rocket fuel.

BLAST OFF!! €8 Euro

FRIDAY 29th

Dudes, you can travel the world and see as many Beastie Boys cover bands as possible and but you will probably never see one as good as the one that’s playing tonight at Café Pak Huis Wilhelmina.

Bar at 8:00 show at 10:00 €7.50

It’s a 3 day rock and roll circus hosted by Pacific Parc at Westerpark. I’m talking about 18 bands in a carnival tent. All these links go to youtube videos. Find a bad one, I double dog dare you.

Friday 29: Slow Jeff and the Tears  Happy Demons  Pignose Willy's  Orgaanklap   Breakin' Levees  Check 1-2

Saturday 30: Jack Torrero  Drip Dry man & the Beat Revolver  Fuz  Cheap Thrills  Local Spastics  The Apple Jacks

Sunday 31: Rockerbox  White Slice  Hosenfefer  Good Old Habit  Gewapend Beton  Anomalys  Missiles of October

Get there before 7 and it’s free, offer to pay anyways.

Get there at 7:01 and it’s €7.50 

Girls Just Want To Have Fun so why not Walk Like and Egyptian down to the Love Shack and Come On Eileen? Right off Leidseplein, Paradiso is hosting  We Love 80's, a disco night with DJs spinning the greatest hits from the 80s. Vogue like Madonna is watching or Beat It.  

Weteringschans 6-8 Doors at 11:30 €10 including the shakedown

SATURDAY 30^th

The Dudok Ensemble is performing the Frühfassung version (Bach’s initial draft) of Bach’s St. Matthew's Passion, so this is like getting the missing Bach demos.

De Duif, 3:30 pm €28

 SUNDAY 31^st

Shake what your karma gave ya! Get a Bollywood Dance lesson today from Vyjayanthi Iyer  model, actress, dancer and choreographer from Mumbai, India. There is literally no way this isn’t fun.

6:30 to 7:30pm € 12 euro limited to 12 people, so sign up with due haste.

Easter Sunday is here and just about every petting zoo in town is planning fun stuff for the kiddies today, including Easter Egg hunts all of them are listed here.

Artis Royal Zoo always has a ton of fun stuff scheduled during Easter, this year check out:

Easter treasure hunt: Friday through Sunday between 12:00 and 14:00. 

***BE GENTLE*** Cuddling baby chicks: Sunday and Monday from 13:30 to 14:15 and from 14:45 to 15:30 at the Ark classroom. Play with and pet chicks, guinea pigs, bunnies, mice and more!  ***BE GENTLE***

From egg to chicken: Sunday and Monday from 11:00 to 16:00. Come to the ‘Oude Broedmachinehuis’ to see how baby chicks make their entrance into the world.

Finally, The Bach Choir of the Netherlands will be presenting their annual presentation of the St. Matthew Passion on authentic period instruments.

It sounds like this:

There are two shows this Sunday at: 1:30pm and 7:00pm

Prices are 50 - 55 euros and this will sell out, get your tickets now!!

 

Until next time, be excellent to each other,

Nate and Jonathan

 

Check out this episode!

Tennerite and Christmas with Dan

A couple days ago I told you guys about shooting exploding targets.
As promised, here is the video of that.

Enjoy.

Christmas 2012 Part 1: The Midwest

My family lives in Wisconsin and Tiff's lives in Orange County so we split trips home into two parts. This means when we go home for the holidays we need full on jackets and boots as well as swim trunks and sneakers. This blog is for Wisconsin. The place I am from.

In Chicago my Aunts Sandra and Laura and their husbands met up with my cousins Lisa and Lori and their boyfriends for pizza at Lou Malnetti's. It was difficult to write that sentence and I'm not sure I did it correctly. The left hand side of this picture has known me since birth, the right since I was 4 or 5. This is the first time they have met. One of my cousins has a son who is 17 that I've never met. This is reasonable for Mid-westerners. We tend to have family we rarely see but can still enjoy a meal with.

Aunt Laura drove us to Madison where we rented a car, I then used that car to drive Tiffany and I to this place where I stole a rock for my Gramma Lila. She collects rocks from interesting places. I promised her a rock from this place over a decade ago, and finally made good on my promise. I'm a man of my word.

Then Tiff and I snapped this picture at someplace really far from where I got the rock. A place not connected at all. For legal reasons.

Then we drove north and I took this picture of the place where I had Vacation Bible School. I was going to make a joke about how it looked the same, but the building has clearly seen better days. We went there for a couple weeks for a couple summers. I wonder who paid for the kids to be there, where they came from and why they did it. Looking back they could have only been 16 or 17. Is there a Reddit AMA for I taught Vacation Bible School?

It was a couple miles down the road from my house. We rode our bikes there. Unsupervised. And nothing bad ever happened. It was non-denominational. They pretty much just taught the Golden Rule, which is a solid rule. Jonah and the whale, the moral lessons. No fire and brimstone, no pro life, no Jesus juice. Songs, crafts, kickball, Kool-Aid and see you kids tomorrow. 

This was my grandpa's dog, now it's my Aunt Laura's. His name is Lassie. He's a good dog and he smells like dust, which to me, smells like home. My Gramma Jo and Granpa Bob always had collies and they always smelled like dust. I like that smell.

Later that week I took this picture of the first motorcycle I ever rode. From 2-9 years old, I put MILES on this hog. It was at the ball diamond. When I was a kid softball was a big deal. All the bars had men's team and a women's team and they would play at softball diamonds all over the place. They had rules like if you knock over the pitcher's pitcher of beer, it's a home run. This motorcycle has been sitting on the same spring since before 1977.

I played Dominoes with my Granny, Tiff and my step dad, Dan. I won and I took her money...If she couldn't afford it, she should not have gambled.

I also recorded most of the evening. I like to listen to her tell stories and she has one of the world's greatest laughs. Now I will have it forever.

 This is me, Dan and Gram. Not in that order, I'm in the middle. I forget, until I see a picture how much taller I am than they are. My Gram has been exactly the same for at least 35 years. She went to Israel last year and is probably coming to Amsterdam this year. She does Yoga, rides her bike, snow shoes and saw the Great Depression. You should ASPIRE to be her.

The next day Dan gave Tiffany this gun to shoot at these crazy exploding targets he had. I showed them to my friend David the Scientist who broke them down chemically. He also told me there are two types of people who get into Chemistry; junkies and pyromaniacs. He was a pyro. 

I shot a video of it exploding. I'll post it later.

Dan and I shot trap. I was not as good as I used to be, but I used to be REALLY good. I could regularly go 9 for 10 but I was lucky to hit 6 that day. We talked a lot about guns and gun control on this trip. This was only a few days after Newtown and I had a lot of questions. Dan told us stories of how easy it is to buy parts at gun shows to make fully automatic guns and how the government has created demand for bullets by making threats of bans instead of tightening loop-holes.  

After shooting we put together a 500 piece puzzle that seemed to be 1 piece short, or I don't understand puzzles. Both are possible. I mean I didn't count the pieces and it's possible that all puzzles are like this and it's also possible that the tree had a blemish that looks exactly like a puzzle piece.

While we were there I cleaned my childhood bedroom for the first time in 18 years. I feel bad saying this, but I burned a bunch of books. Mainly old text books, like how to use Photoshop 2.0 and a water damaged English comprehension book. I kept an old uni-directional Sims snowboard in case they need one for the museum and I donated everything else; Beastie Boys bootleg cassettes, a guitar case, A bunch of Life In Hell books to a local thrift shop.

The next day we got cheese curds, at the dairy I was fired from (twice) and then drove thorough this snow storm to get to my Aunt Marj's house to hang out for the day. The drive to her house takes 40 minutes, we made it in just over 2 hours. This is a main road by the way.

That night we went to have dinner with my cousin Ron and his family. He has 6 kids all with HUGE personalities, they're pretty rad. In this picture there are 3 of them. I am Uncle Jungle Gym to them. They are monkeys.

The next day we drove to Madison and had dinner with my sister Stacy I didn't get any pictures with her and I'm kinda bent about it but we had dinner with her and her family. Later on, I saw Flywheel Jesse but he had to go to work early the next morning so he couldn't hang out too long.

This is Valerie, Deegan, Tiffany and myself at the end of Deegan's birthday party, but the beginning of his birthday. He was nice enough to move it up a day so we could hang for it. He's a good dude and my sister seems to like him.

The next day we had lunch at a restaurant near the Capitol of Wisconsin. It was cold as all get out but we walked down State St. I used to hang out on State St all the time, there was a while there when I didn't pay for anything, not a cup of coffee, a pair of shoes or CD if I didn't want to, I was the hook up KING. Now I don't recognize 90% of the stores. I bought hot chocolate from a place that ONLY makes chocolate. It was next to a store that sold wooden iPhone cases.

The next day Tiff and I got on a bus headed back to Chicago. We caught a 1 o'clock flight to Orange County. We'll pick up there next time. 

68: Under Covers. A Century Club Special

In a special episode Nate and Tiff welcome Sara and Jesse Marsh to play Century Club (1 shot of beer per minute for 100 minutes) while playing cover songs from these catergories: 1) Awesome cover, your favorite one 2) Did not need to be done 3) Better than the original 4) By someone you know 5) From a soundtrack 6) Rock version of a country song or vice versa 7) You gotta hear this one

67: The Pregnancy Pact

Nate's sister Sara and her husband Jesse fly into Amsterdam for Thanksgiving and a movie trivia challenge. Blood flows like...well, blood.

66: You're Not Doing So Well, Work Harder

Tiff's back from Germany, our friend Amber stops by. Moving sucks so Obama decides to win again, Willard do NOT see that coming. Gramma moves in with Ted Nugent Tiff gives Obama the Myers Briggs by proxy Football (soccer) movie test Me and this mentally challenged gentleman would like 4000 dollars worth of candy please.

Check out this episode!

65: Redeptioned, Shawshank Style

Nate and Tiff deconstruct Charlie Murphy.
Tiff finally sees Shawshank Redemption.
Do we have mice?
Tiff tests Nate on action movies.
Nate huffs welding fumes with an old pro.
Felix Baumgarten jumps from space.